The FCC is considering a return to 1970s-style media regulation that could significantly impact how broadcasters air local programming. They have determined that local broadcasters are out of touch with their local communities, and that Washington mandates are needed to fix the problem. The FCC needs to hear from you. Tell the FCC how broadcasters serve their local communities – with relevant local news, public service announcements, weather and emergency information, public affairs programming, political programming, community outreach and more. Washington-based media critics have had their say. Now it’s time for broadcasters and their supporters to have theirs.

The following is what I wrote:...

With the advent of talk radio, as well as with the proliferation of Christian radio, our local radio stations are more in touch with their community than has been the case in any of the nearly 50 years that I have been alive in this great nation.

More than ever before, talk radio allows community voices to be heard. The proliferation of and free market of voices has led to an informed electorate unlike we have ever seen in this nation, not only on national issues, but on local issues as well.

Prior to the advent of talk radio, "public service" programming was in such a dry format that it was nearly unlistenable, with an hour or so on Sunday morning and another hour or so on Sunday evening. And the rest of the week was music, and spates of news at the top of the hour. There was no engaging of the public, and the public was not informed to nearly the degree that it is today.

Talk radio is what the Founding Fathers envisioned a democracy to be: A free market of ideas, with ideas being able to stand up to the market (or fall) based on their own merits, not what a central governing authority thinks that it should be.

To mess with what we have is to certainly mess with the First Amendment; and to do a disservice to Americans now and forever forward.

Do not rob Americans nor their progeny of the intellectual freedom that continues to make America even more so the beacon of freedom and citizen rule that it was meant to be.

Again, this is being posted at 10:12pm, and there is less than two hours left of the day until public comment is closed. Please visit now and make your voices heard!